I have been reading about this issue regarding enabling "BIOS support for Thunderbolt" that a number of users on the Lenovo Forum have experienced. Not just this either. Touch screen firmware updates and BIOS updates on some of the X-series laptops (and possibly others) have been breaking the touch screen feature requiring a display and/or a motherboard replacement to fix.

Does anybody even test these features and updates in house before they are released to the public?

Does anybody even test these features and updates in house before they are released to the public?

Yes, they do. But as systems get increasingly complicated with more different HW/SW/FW components from multiple vendors, the amount of crazy corner cases increases exponentially, and you get weird failures out of nowhere that are ridiculously difficult to debug. Believe me, this is something I know a lot about.

At some point the decision makers say "Screw it, we cannot delay the release any longer; we'd rather deal with 0.1% (or 0.01%) failures and replace the customers' systems at our expense". Of course, the frustration of the customer who just had his machine bricked (even if he gets it fixed for free) is not something actually accounted for in this equation.

If it is a minor feature I can maybe see it. But Thunderbolt? On a laptop advertise to have Thunderbolt and is a feature in which people pay more for? Little sympathy from me.

The other thing they are counting on is not everyone raising up enough of a stink and returning the product. Even with the recall of T61 Nvidia there are still lots of T61 that failed and was abandoned by the consumer rather than deal with the hassle.